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8/3/2019 Obey English

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A liberating punch

in the guts

I[19972000]You have to start somewhere. So for the

purpose of this study of Tim Berresheims art, irrespective of

any changing trends in art history or art critique, and without

venturing into his psychology or private life, it seems appropriate

to start with the artists existence from his ominous beginnings

at the art academy, where an education which despite all the

apparent obstacles and cultural and historical erosions experienced

over the last decades and centuries has outlived these times as

some kind of biographical measure of all things, and is still magi-cally pulled from the hat as a wildcard (...was a student of...) by

almost the whole art business world, from state-sponsored group

exhibitions via the privately financed Youngsterschau (show for

young artists) to sales meetings held in art galleries and presenta-

tions given in self-promoting showrooms. This conjectural turning

point and the art business world with its desire for clearly struc-

tured biographies and hierarchies is very grateful for that is now

considered to be weakening the position of the (young) artist as a

being who is part of society, as well as undermining the technical,

stylistic and iconographic direction of artistic development at a

time when the artists (sub)cultural socialization also with refer-

ence to what is later described as the work of art, or work hasalready developed to some degree and must continue to do so.

Now and then, however, this whole idea becomes almost irrel-

evant, as is the case with Tim Berresheim, born in 1975, for whom

during this phase meaning during the 90s it was less (if at all)

the fine arts, and instead music that made his life worth living.

During the 00s, this soft spot of his experienced a shift and intensi-

fied, and after dropping out of the academy very early on, Tim

emerged not only as a fine artist but also as a musician and pro-

ducer of experimental and electronic music. But, back to academy

life: as the previous century was coming to an end, Berresheim

began his education at the Kunstakademie Braunschweig, where

he had successfully applied at the beginning of the year with asmall number of photographs taken during the previous six months.

That he finally made this step was the result of a one-year-intern-

ship (began during summer 1997) with the director, actor and

scriptwriter Burkhard Driest. Apart from the aesthetic and philo-

sophical foundations in Driests work, reflected in particular in

his scripts and drama theory, it was the directors obsession with

coupling his own creative output with a pertinent dose of misan-

thropy, and experiencing this simultaneously as an essential pro-

tective shield, a possible escape route and a permanent possible

retreat, that made a deep impact on Berresheim.

Driests lasting influence motivated his decision to apply fo

a course in film studies. Until then Berresheim had made, in eve

sense, a wide berth around anything to do with fine arts. He had

shunned the double standards and hypocrisy of the art business

and had failed to create even a single artefact at least until he

found focus in his art for the entry exams. That it would never

come to the intended training with the filmmaker Brigitte Heinis due, among other factors, to Hartmut Neumann, his professor

during the one-year foundation course, who managed to awaken

in him a seemingly dormant interest in fine arts and an especially

unexpected enthusiasm for more recent art history, all of which

inspired Tim Berresheim to not only pour over exhibition cata-

logues but also produce his first paintings. He created around fi

acrylic and oil paintings in this relatively short space of time, all

which have been destroyed or are lost, and in any case are consi

ered irrelevant. Due to this and respect where its due these

of no further relevance to this study.

II[20002002] During these first two terms, Tim Berreshediscovered completely new creative possibilities during

his weekend trips to the Rhineland away from the ac

demy not only in the physical sense which radically broke aw

from what he had learned at Braunschweig and promoted the

development of a fundamentally altered visual language which

would eventually lead to his distinctive own style. We are tal-

king about computer-created work a medium in which the sel

educated Berresheim has now produced all his visual and music

work for over five years. After creating his first computer imag

in the summer of 2000 he nevertheless began a new term at

Braunschweig with the acclaimed sculptor and photographer

Johannes Bruns, but it soon became obvious that his days at thacademy had to come to an end. Only a few weeks into the term

he realised that the homogenized speech and behavioural patter

of the student community promised neither creative friction nor

inspiring intellectual confrontation especially with respect to

the almost pitiful discussions about creative forms of expression

beyond traditionally respected techniques and that it was

inevitable that his path would lead him in a very different direc

tion thereafter.


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In these circumstances the news that Albert Oehlen had taken up

a teaching post that year at the arts academy in Dsseldorf was

significant. He was one of the few artists who considered the

computer an acceptable medium for creating images that were

not merely computer-generated graphics, collages or montages.

Exactly 10 years previously, in 1990, Albert Oehlen had produced

his first computer-generated image. Since then he has managed

to transpose key questions that had already figured heavily in

his paintings- for example the aspects of trivialization and artifi-ciality onto the new medium, at the same time sharpening the

outlines of the respective media with this transition from the real

to artificial, and balancing out the combination possibilities.1

With this background it was only a matter of course that at the

beginning of 2001, Berresheim went to Dsseldorf to exchange

ideas with Albert Oehlen, independent of the academys formali-

ties. This resulted in an intense collaboration lasting about one and

a half years and in the joint involvement in the group exhibition

Offene Haare, offene Pferde Amerikanische Kunst 193345, a

collaboration that greyed the area of prospective student-teacher,

artist-assistant and work colleague relationships. That Berresheim

in conclusion to the topic of artistic education wasnt actuallya formal student in Dsseldorf, but until the beginning of 2002 still

a student of the academy in Braunschweig should be mentioned

here at least as a footnote for the chroniclers.

The first exhibition Tim Berresheim participated in was

as part of the group exhibition Superschloss, put together by

artists and on display as the concluding part of a four-part exhibi-

tion series at the Stdtischen Galerie Wolfsburg in March 2002.

Among the eleven Superschloss artists were Michael Bauer,

Stefanie Popp and Andre Linpinsel, artists with whom Tim

Berresheim would work during the following two years both as

an artist and a curator. Most significant was here without a doubt

the exchange with Michael Bauer, a fellow student from Braun-schweig, who had started his education earlier and (there it is

again) was a student of Walter Dahn. Bauer was the first and,

until the later collaborations with Jonathan Meese and Thomas

Arnolds, only artist which whom Berresheim created joint work.

In the lead up to the Wolfsburg exhibition the artists also made the

far-reaching decision to found and open the exhibition room

Brotherslasher in the same year. In the Stdtischen Galerie

the impression gained was that the room they created seemed to

exhibit as wide a spectrum of creative forms of expressions as p

sible. Apart from joint installations, sculptures, videos and text,

and the poster Brotherslasher in Blde (Brotherslasher comin

soon), Berresheim also exhibited a few oil paintings and his first

computer prints.

Only a month after Superschloss the aforementioned gro

exhibition in the Klnischer Kunstverein opened, where next to

Albert Oehlen and Tim Berresheim among others, the two artist

Andr Butzer and Markus Selg from Berlin also exhibited andwho would soon accept invitations by Brotherslasher. Offene

Haare, offene Pferde Amerikanische Kunst 1933-45 was a

sprawling homage by the seven artists in total to the Russian art

John Graham who emigrated to New York in 1920 and has bee

largely overlooked until now. For this purpose, the large bright roo

was divided with a number of extra walls so that the meandering

exhibition architecture with its added display areas, which woul

very soon be knocked down and replaced by the infamous Kln

Loch (Colognes hole), imparted the sense of a furious finale.

At the same time this documented a self-assured return to painti

in contemporary art that was becoming conspicuous everywher

In one of these newly created rooms were five large compuprints and images by Berresheim, which differed from Albert

Oehlens work especially in that they refused to follow their man

fold openness be it the possibilities of contextual connections,

safeguarded by semantic and iconographic references, or the

transparency of the material aesthetics. Visible traces of the pro-

duction and design processes, like pixel structures, are retained

to create a new kind of painting based on the lack of precision

specific to computer-generated design. The artificiality that

Oehlen aims for can be followed through in (and because of) th

combination of computer art and painting, that is to say in the

disparate degrees of perfection in processing and editing of the

subject in at least two different sizes in front of the screen andin front of the canvas. Here improvisation and chance rather tha

well thought-out ideas define the final design of Phantasieland-

schaften und Gitterfiguren oder vektorgenerierte Krper.3

Additionally integrated photographs and images found on the

internet as well as the most absurd or amusing text passages ensu

that the scenes are layered with different meanings as is the ca

especially with the so-called Plakate, computer collages from t

late 90s and the early 00s [Image 1].


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Even at this exhibition in Cologne it is a different matter where

the computer images of Tim Berresheim are concerned, whereby

purpose of clarity and inner closeness of the subject are shown to

resist the designs of openness criss-crossing the image even if it

were to still take one and a half years until this Hermetik (hermet-

ics), on which these efforts are based, would become one of the

defining characteristics of Berresheims art theory for the present

time.

Two of the exhibited works shown for the first time featuredhis by now typical grid figures [Image 2]. They took over as

anthropomorphic image elements from the skeleton and the

mannequin, which still featured on one of the exhibited prints in

Wolfsburg (Visual Energy, 2002) entangled in a meaningful

fight from which no winner would emerge. The role of those two

main actors, unevenly aligned in iconography and art history,

was now taken over by these life-size protagonists with which the

viewer could identify but which were highly disconcerting never-

theless. Here they are still designed with careful concessions to

the conventions of the outside world (for example hair style and

clothes) but at the same time are also disturbing and remote.

III[20022003] In October 2002, three months after

the end of the exhibition in the Kunstverein, Tim

Berresheim and Michael Bauer opened the exhibiti-

on room Brotherslasher, also in Cologne, not far from the

almost completed Mediapark. This happened at a time when only

a few minutes walk away, other exhibitions such as April in

Parking Meters, kontor and Schnittraum, were still exhibit-

ing in the North of the city (Nordstadt) and which had been

relatively significant since the beginning of the 00s. Their finest

days, however, were already coming to an end, and all three of

them abandoned this area during the following year due to either

closing down or moving to the Belgian Quarter, favouring its con-siderably higher density of galleries. Its not only in this context

that the opening of Brotherslasher seemed almost an anti-cycli-

cal endeavour: the location in the basement of a house on the busy

Erftstrae and the direct neighbourhood of the largest publicly

sponsored complex of the culture industry apart from the

Klnarena and Coloneum wouldnt exactly guarantee relevant

passers-by. That it should take a few weeks until even the part

of Colognes population actually interested in art would find out

about this new place was surely also the result of logistical negl

gence; on the first invitation to the opening, for example, the

date was omitted, and then some time passed before the first pr

release was sent to the local press. However, all this can serve

only partly as an excuse for the lack of interest at least in parts

of the advanced Cologne art scene: we know from experience

that these details are of little consequence to resident art seeker

and the urban in-crowd.

The actual obstacles which hindered the access to Brotherslasher were obviously grounded in the inventive self-image of

enterprise. Starting with the unusually offensive yet meaningles

name, it continues with the programmatic focus, which surfaced

presentations by unknown artists of the Wolfsburg exhibition, a

in particular in regular invitations to artists from the busy neigh

bourhood of the former Maschenmode (Berlin) and the Akadem

Isotrop (Hamburg). Especially this decision allowed them to co

municate that the enthusiasm for certain forms of expression or

the delight in a presumed mutual attitude there were even trac

of the doubtful term Gesinnung (conviction) in the air as we

as the desire to show artists with only rudimentary representatio

in Cologne (for example at Hammelehle and Ahrens) were moreimportant than to distinguish themselves in the slipstream of ne

positions. At the same time it was claimed, not for the first time

that some things are more difficult to communicate or establish

Cologne than they are in Berlin or Hamburg. But this is a differ

subject altogether. You cant really address this issue with the

awkward aesthetic appearance or advertising of the exhibition

room that Brotherslasher opted for, considering for example t

unique choice of motives sometimes very entertaining or occa-

sionally wholly tasteless for the countless invitations, posters,

CDs and catalogue covers, which were often not all that relevan

to the advertised exhibition. Having mastered these potential

obstacles, however, the visitor would find presentations and pubcations which did not really differ much in terms of respectabilit

from the commercial galleries. And they often came across a littl

bit more civil (and more welcoming, too) than is the case with

some of the other self-managed rooms. But with this effectivel

all-encompassing aesthetic strategy, the unshakeable vicinity of

fine arts to artistic questions in general would be the focus on fr

day one, and furthermore the diverse role of design in its widest

sense as a principal element in the image production of such a


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space as well as its implicit methods of exclusion and the resulting

socio-cultural connections and all this independent of what was

actually exhibited in the room.

The opening of Brotherslasher was celebrated with a

joint exhibition of Berresheim and Bauer with Jonathan Meese

and centred on three dressed, life-sized dolls. In contrast to the

possibly most famous of all historic exhibitions with dolls, the

Exposition International du Surrealisme 1938 in the Parisian

Galerie des Beaux-Arts, in which a total of sixteen female shopmannequins were hired and each dressed by a different artist,

the three participants in this case were responsible for designing

the doll as well as the outfit. During the following two years you

would only see singular, smaller works by Berresheim as part

of three further group exhibitions at Keiner ist besser oder

eventuell besser, the first comprehensive show with a total of

fourteen artists in the summer of 2003, in spring 2004 as part of

Ganz oben, the first presentation after the move into ground

floor premises of the same house, as well as at Screamers, a

homage to the legendary but sadly mostly forgotten punk band

from Los Angeles. At this point in time it had long been clear that

Berresheims interest in music wasnt satisfied with his work ascurator, because concurrent with the opening of Brotherslasher

the first vinyl record by and with Tim Berresheim was released,

under the project name Die Ahabs (The Ahab Family), which

he had recorded with Jonathan Meese, until then exclusively asso-

ciated with fine arts (and occasional acting). Berresheim had met

Meese at the beginning of that year, and Meese soon expressed a

desire to make music together, a move which would fall, in short,

onto extremely fertile ground. After the debut work of the Ahabs

the pair would record under the most diverse pseudonyms during

the three following years Haircar, Trepanation and Wir sind

die Musiker (We are the Musicians), among others already

numbering eight records and five singles (as of September 2005)which were all released on Tim Berresheims label New Amerika.

4 Further records which followed the first LP the album Swing

Your Thing of the Bergkapelle Mount Everest as well as four 7s

paved the way for the first fine art collaboration of the two artists.

On the occasion the release party was held in December 2003 at

the Berlin gallery Contemporary Fine Arts, that evening twelve

images were for sale, black and white computer prints by Berres-

heim, almost all of which featured singular elements of the record

covers and labels mainly portraits of the musicians painted

over by Meese in bold red [Image 3].

IV[2003] Only a few weeks earlier, in Mid Novemb

Tim Berresheims first solo exhibition took place i

the project space of the gallery Hammelehle und

Ahrens. The previous year, its two owners had moved to Cologn

from Stuttgart where they had founded their gallery in 1994

and had come across Bauers oil paintings and Berresheims computer images during their regular visits to Brotherslasher. Th

offered the two artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in

their private project space in the gallery house ads1a, a forme

substation in Cologne Rhiel, converted to high acclaim by the

Cologne architect Bernd Kniess and which now accommodates

four galleries in total. Berresheim exhibited half a dozen works

under the theme Let me help, which were all created in 2003.

Despite the fact that it was his first solo appearance these work

marked a turning point in several ways in his still young oeuvre

On show were amongst others the two, at present last joint wor

with Michael Bauer, the so-called Sexperimente (as oil on canv

and as computer print). While Bauer continued to remain faithfto oil painting, as in the project space exhibition Die Tne mein

Flte which immediately followed Let me help, Tim Berreshe

departed after this one short relapse categorically from the hab

of traditional image creation and its literal traces of personal

handwriting in order to design his figures, objects and scenes n

entirely with a computer a few months later he would enlist th

help of a digital camera. At the same time the project exhibition

contained the last of his works in which digits or words are use

as non-visual regulated bearers of meaning teamed with these

design elements, or works in which absurd rhymes or spoone-

risms and frivolous humour played a role. This might be filed a

the last remainders of a beer-fuelled student life; in any case it ifurther proof that it will still be some time before young male

artists in Germany will distance themselves from the need to do

a Kippenberger for a while, at least at the beginning of their

career. Luckily Berresheim knew how to let go right away.

Apart from all that, however, the core piece of Let me help

was without a doubt The Muse [Image 4], which for one

overshadowed the rest of the works because of its sheer size

(250 x 400 cm) but also indicated a new direction of and there


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no other way of saying it a completely unique visual language

which would be continued and modulated meticulously in the

following two years. The memory of the first vehement and almost

disturbing encounter with this over-sized picture during the

opening on this rainy and dark late Sunday afternoon is still very

present: the cold, wet trip to the gallery far removed from the busy

centres of art business in town, and the subsequent walk through

the staircase up to the second floor whereupon entering the

exhibition room any trace of pleasant autumnal feelings would besmashed to pieces by the force of this composition, which hung

isolated on the wall opposite the entrance. At that moment it

wouldnt make up for the unpleasant journey, on the contrary. The

shatteringly clear and at the same time unsettlingly designed com-

bination of human bodies with almost entirely abstract shapes,

the eerie and quite literally untenable composition and the more

than simply unfathomable iconography of the depicted situation

went hand in hand with the certainty that any comforting aesthetic

sense of safety had been pulled away from underneath ones feet

even if it is just the last trusted sheet anchors like holding on to the

gesture of the known brush stroke or the calculated triggering of

art historic and/or pop cultural references, as has often been usedin the more recent past and in more ways than one you were left

standing in the cold with your nightmarish but still amazed confu-

sion. This might sound ridiculous, but for the first time in years of

running aimlessly around art fairs, group exhibitions and academy

tours, this had the impact one would only dare to consider a possi-

bility: that I had seen something incomparable if not unprecedent-

ed, and as a result this visual language would take me in again and

again, just as it did the first time, during the following days. In

this sensory mixture of nightmare and fascination it just doesnt

make the decision for you, whether you should avoid this idiosyn-

cratic vehemence or give in to it and look for the confrontation.

During these moments and with this in mind, it seemed quite anobvious question to ask whether the exhibition title Let me help

was actually to be understood as sheer mockery. Or maybe it was

exactly this hermetic unity of the setting and the resulting ques-

tions about the interaction of visual elements and bearers of

meaning that offered an epistemological assistance, reaching

further than the own modes of depiction, and which focussed on

a far wider complex the perception of works of fine art and the

balances of power inherent to their production and reception.

Painting plays a role in this first over-sized computer image

only as a subject and so brush and palette are the only identifiab

objects in this computer-designed composition, which had been

like all the works that followed transferred to the canvas as a

unique copy in solvent-based paint. At the time of this overly tec

nical and allegorical declaration of resignation to painting, this

very art form was actually making a come-back, for some unex-

pectedly, at full throttle to pole position of the art world. Already

at the beginning of the 00s painting managed to re-establish itseas the hottest thing in the art business, after multidisciplinarity,

institutional criticism and connectivity of theories had gained th

upper hand and as a matter of course, it was those which ques-

tioned those myths of modern art, which primarily painting as a

art form brought with it. Especially in 2003 this development w

ennobled in Germany by significant big exhibitions, for example

spring with Painting Pictures at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

with Lieber Maler, Male Mir at Frankfurts Schirn. At the sam

time the national variant of the Junge Malerei discourse made

an impact for the first time with the sprawling group exhibition

Deutschemalereizweitausendunddrei in Frankfurts Kunstver

and ever since it has been floating atop an intimidating wave ofsuccess. At the end of this year The Muse then seemed like an

ultimatum to the myths that we believed forgotten but were swe

ashore with this wave: the myth of the tormented (male) artist,

enveloped by the mysterious aura of his workshop, kissed by th

(female) muse in a moment of genial enlightenment, who as a

matter of course uses the brush as the connecting link between h

physicality and the canvas, and where finally ones famous own

handwriting is immortalised. The Muse acts as a hinge, not on

in this dialectic game between theoretic presence and material

absence of the art form painting, but also in its significant role in

Tim Berresheims artistic development over the last five years. It

is his first major work in which the singular visual elements thspatial design, the inimitable presence of the protagonists, the el

oration of the abstract shapes or the constellation of the objects

confidently assert themselves after their until that point more tim

efforts. Here they manage to acquire the significance of aestheti

axioms, reaching further than The Muse, which Tim Berreshe

will be able to fall back on in his future works. Until then, how-

ever, this had been the only individual work designed independ-

ently of a series, a group or at least a pendant, and which featur


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its own title, independent of an exhibition title or a nominal sub-

ordination to its respective series. This was all to change a short

time later.

V[2004] The anthropomorphic figures, usually undressed,

hairless and partially deformed, would soon after Let me

help become an unmistakable and fundamental element

in Tim Berresheims art. In the past two years they have played

a significant double role as nightmarish subjects and at the sametime as the central constructive elements of the composition

this is the case at least in all the large-sized works, generally 180 x

200 cm. This also applies to the two pictures of the Obey series

featuring one figure each, both created at the beginning of 2004,

whose isolationism might even surpass the suffocating intensity

of The Muse. The once again male protagonists remain in an

artificial, even embarrassing pose in the foreground of the picture,

but despite their dominant position, the eye is nevertheless led

into a diffusely obscure but elaborately illuminated room, in which

only distinctive shadows and reflections of a handful of bizarre

objects offer help with orientation [Image 5]. These focus points

are readily accepted by the viewers gaze while navigating overthe canvas, however at the same time they intensify the slightly

irritated sensation of perplexity that had already accompanied

first impressions of the enigmatic The Muse. This tightens the

screws of the inner symbolic unity just a little bit further, so that

even the deciphering of possible internal meanings or relations-

hips is lost on the way. It is exactly this cultivation of perplexity

that shuts out what Berresheim summarises with the term Welt

der Vereinbarungen (World of Agreements) which is a challen-

ge to the exclusions of the science of images and on an even more

basic level, the world of communication itself. Combined with the

principle of Hermetik (hermetics) as a second central theme

in his art theory, this forms a renunciation of the mechanisms ofinterpretation.

In this radical critique of interpretation and communication

and especially with the resulting disregard of the principles of

referentiality and/or authenticity, there lies furthermore the

question of the afore-mentioned reaction of the image objects

between their roles as bearers of meaning on the one hand, and as

pure visual elements on the other. Despite the technological well

thought-through execution of both works, which momentarily

seem to be far ahead of their time, the depicted objects manage

in exactly that oscillating moment to take on the thread of a long

gone era and spin it further. At the beginning of the second half

of the 19th century the autonomy of the art form of painting wa

promoted for the first time, and in the following 50 years it wou

evolve into total abstraction. The germinating plea for artificialit

and inconsistency also as an emancipating separation to the

then new medium of photography served the purpose of leavin

behind the centuries-old demand for a more descriptive art. WhEdouard Manet presented his first major piece The Spanish

Singer, also known as The Guitarist [Image 6] in 1861 at the

Salon de Paris, which he like Berresheim at the time of The

Muse had completed when he was 28 years old, he left behin

a baffled audience, until then exclusively trained in the interpret

tion of biblical events, historical reproductions and the allegorie

of the realists. The critique of his very ordinary depiction of the

playing and singing man in a diffuse space, accentuated by the

intense colouring of a few objects and the distinctive play of ligh

and shadow, set itself alight with exactly these details, which in

favour of their function as visual elements left out the truthful co

tent demanded by the traditionalists be it the randomly assem-bled clothes of the musician, the purportedly wrong use of hand

on the guitar or the forced artificial posture. The majority of the

critics were unable to accept these yearnings for autonomy and

it seemed understandable at the time to not want to acknowledg

a Manet with his bold painting style, his daring themes, with

these inexplicable physiognomies, which wouldnt open up to th

viewer nor narrate or share anything.5

This characterisation of Manets combination of spatial dep

choice of themes and physicality reads like a preliminary descrip

tion of the Obey series where especially the incommensurabili

of the figures happens on a different plateau away from the

irritations which can emanate from an identifiable person, forexample a lonely guitarist. Berresheims pictures refuse any poss

ble complicity with the reality outside the image or the canonise

repertoires of symbols and instead give away alleged securities

available to the recipient for interpretation or empowerment.

This means, to word it inadequately, that the question of power

posed ex negative; what is debated here is nothing less than the

conditions of this knowledge configuration. At first surprising, t

venture does reintegrate painting as an art form but it doesnt


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rehabilitate it. Because it doesnt happen like a triumphant return

of the softening icing on a cake that forms the mercilessly hard

outlines of the computer image, but as a contrast to one of the last

aesthetic refuges of the recipient, the widest possible associative

space which is opened up by pure abstraction. The design of the

individually painted details, i.e. their size, shape and colour, were

already defined at the time of the composition of the image elements

on the screen, since the shadows (of the head) and the reflections

(of the object hanging from the left hand) were created before therelevant application of paint. Or is it perhaps the other way round?

This confusing combination of varying techniques is in no way

only a playful co-existence of divergent forms of expressions, but

the more emphatic (at first perhaps subtle) comment with respect

to the negations of allegedly cross-border Multimedia practices.

No confrontation or intervention takes place here because each

medium is used to show the limits of relevant clich-laden attribu-

tions cool computer art versus expressive painting in this case

and to sharpen in this synchronicity the view onto their composi-

tion.

The Obey pictures were on display for the first time as part

of the group exhibition White Boy, which Berresheim carriedout together with Michael Bauer and Stefanie Popp at the begin-

ning of 2004 at the Berlin Autocenter exhibition space. He also

showed seven small prints, Echte Gefhle (True Feelings),

which form, largely independent of the large computer images, a

trace to his countless other creative activities, the record covers as

well as the flyers and catalogues for Brotherslasher. In the case

of three of these photographs portraits showing human faces

covered by skull masks this connection becomes all the more

apparent since they had already appeared in the booklet New

Amerika. Hitbeat for Music Lovers. No1, published end of 2003.

In this first publication that Tim Berresheim designed and released

apart from the Brotherslasher catalogues there is no mentionanywhere of himself or his works, it only lists his musical projects

and pseudonyms and confronts them with occasional extremely

bizarre random images. Apart from that the booklet also served as

the first advertisement for the label New Amerika, which

Berresheim founded in an effort to officially catalog the records

he (jointly) recorded and produced and which he professionally

manages since his move to Cologne in February 2004, in co-

operation with the resident distributor a-musik.6

VI[2004] In the summer of the same year Tim Berre

heim bundled together the various areas of his

activity for the purpose of the sweeping synaesthe

attack Dont call us piggy, call us cum, which he organised

with Jonathan Meese, by now a regular collaborator. The proje

would bring with itself two records, the LP Dont call us piggy

and the 7 Call us cum, the first and so far only concert of the

pair, that would take place on the premises of a-musik at Kleine

Griechenmarkt, a comprehensive publication and the exhibitionin the same name at the Hammelehle and Ahrens gallery. Also i

this context we once again come across some of the by now sev

band names (new additions are for example Haircar and Pig

nick), immortalised on disused old wooden doors in scribbled

writing next to sparse figuration. Each one of these modified

auratic ready-made objects, as possibly the greatest imaginable

contrast and yet as an integral component, flanks the to the hig-

hest degree artificial and precise computer images, again with ju

one figure each. At least this applies to four of the five constella

ons, all of them entitled Tea and Coffee and numbered. The

tryptich Tea and Coffee 5 [Image 7] is an exception in several

ways. Two doors were used which show the artists first namesinstead of their pseudonyms. They frame an image twice as larg

(in comparison with the other works, 220x360cm), on which th

standing figure throws a t-shirt to the other figure unnoticed, an

who sits upright with a straight back, facing the viewer. On the

front of the t-shirt the crumpled portraits of Berresheim and

Meese can be seen. With the picture on this printed piece of clo

thing the outside reality gains access to the image, but only in a

very self-referential manner: the figure itself becomes a fan of th

music released by its creator. All of the similarly comprehensibl

references in the Tea and Coffee series are limited exclusively

to the persons and products that are connected with this prolife

ting synthesis of the various art forms (Gesamtkunstwerk) thatcame out of the exhibition. The nesting of the visual and musica

forms of expression is taken to the extreme in the computer ima

Tea and Coffee 4 that shows an image of the LP cover Dont

call us piggy by Tim and Jonathan (or Tim and Jonathan)

on which again Berresheim and Meese can be seen.

By naming the individuals responsible for the various

formations Tim and Jonathan in this work series as well as the

individual projects, by turning their own products into visual


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components and specific subjectivities and with the repetition of

ample obscure iconographic details, for example the omnipresent

exercise weights on the most diverse levels of representation as

an element on the record covers, in the catalogue about the artists

and in the computer images belonging to the figures the Gesamt-

kunstwerk, encompassing the music, sculpture, computer art,

lyrics, painting, applied art and photography, delivers its own

deconstruction as a part of itself. The highly sentimental, in its

detail uneasy artificiality of the images is combined with the mate-rial simplicity of the intentionally constructed attribution of differ-

ent artists. Both contribute to the fact that despite the dimensions

of the whole sprawling venture, a soothing synaesthetic sense of

comfort, which blurs the outlines of the separate species in favour

of an atmospheric overall impression, is ruled out from the outset.

In fact the opposite is the case, as in several places a distance is

created and the perception is focussed on the individual elements

of the whole: be it the already described collision of the most vari-

ous of materials, the eccentric, at times questionable choice of

names and titles or especially the documentation of the production

conditions of music and art in the catalogue, which contains

excerpts of Jonathan Meeses lyrics as well as photographs of thetwo in their own private spheres, which seem to have served occa-

sionally as models for the design of the figures. Unlike quite a few

other alliances between fine arts and music with their tautological

all-over strategies just think of such diverse efforts as the instal-

lations of Carsten Nicolais or the video works of Rodney Graham

it is not the cross-border compatibilities and common ground,

but the fractures between the genres and between the spheres of

production and representation that become the subject of discus-

sion. This all-encompassing yet transparent principle of synaesthe-

sis is reminiscent of Bertolt Brechts critique of the Wagnerian

Gesamtkunstwerk in whose counter concept, the age-old battle

between words, music and image () can quite simply be settledby the radical separation of these elements. As long as Gesamt-

kunstwerk signifies that the whole is made up of everything mixed

together, as long as the art forms melt into one another, the indi-

vidual elements will all suffer similar degradation so that each is

little more than an idea or a prompt leading to the other. This

melting process captivates the observer, who himself is melted

into the painting, consequently representing a passive (suffering)

part of the Gesamtkunstwerk. This kind of magic obviously needs

to be fought. Anything that attempts to hypnotise or that tries to

create inappropriate states of delirium must be blurred, must be

surrendered. 7

Aside from the computer images, whose life-size protagonis

are painted over by Meese later on though seemingly, as a baf

fling close-up inspection will reveal, not directly onto the canvas

the aforementioned doors and a handful of the snap shots of the

artists, declared as private art works that are not for sale, Berres

heim showed two photographic works (School of Tim and Schof Jonathan), in which he made use of the experiences he had

gained when working with three-dimensional vector-generated

bodies. (Before this exhibition his only effort to show photograp

ic works had been as part of the Brotherslasher group exhibiti

Ganz oben.) The deserted situations in a forest and park respe

tively [Image 8] were taken by Berresheim himself with a digita

camera, so that later on the figures and individual objects could

be integrated onto this scene with the computer, and in this way

could evolve into a credible part of the image, unlike in a collage

or any other mixed media constellation. It is again a challenge

for the paradigm of multimedia overlays, but this happens here

from an entirely different perspective which strikes this ambitiodemand with its own weapons. By compositing a technique

that has become quite popular thanks to the increasingly wide-

spread combining of animation and real film during the last 25

years (an early example of which would be Don Chaffreys Pet

Monster of 1977) an irritatingly homogeneous visual languag

in which a separation into the various elements seems impossibl

even with the best of efforts.

Only a few months after the completion of Dont call us

piggy, call us cum, Tim Berresheim took part for the first time i

an art fair, the Art Cologne straight away in his double functio

as artist and exhibition room manager. At the end of the aisle

where Hammelehle and Ahrens presented one of his Obey pictures was the Brotherslasher booth as part of the section You

Contemporaries, new to this fair. Together with Brotherslashe

collaborator Heike Freudenthal, Berresheim and Bauer exhibite

a selection of lesser known, primarily by Brotherslasher repre

sented artists(Popp, Linpinsel), next to already established artis

who had remained close to Brotherslasher (Butzer, Selg), alon

with all the Brotherslasher catalogues, editions and in conne

tion with a-musik a large selection of artists records. The stall


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left a lasting impression with this entertaining mix, so that the pro-

gramme and the combination of the displayed objects were praised

frequently, the address book and e-mail subscription list filled

quickly and last but not least, the sales topped even the most hope-

ful expectations. Nevertheless would they leave it at that, for the

Art Cologne venture had confirmed exactly what had been a reg-

ular theme with Brotherslasher during the two preceding years:

that it is ostensibly the advertising strategies and the image of the

exhibitor, rather than the unconditional interest in artistic formsof expressions actually aspired to that matter. Only now, during

their ennoblement thanks to their integration into the exhibition

halls of the trade fair, many no longer could, wanted to or had to

overlook this exhibition space; now all those people interested

in art even and especially those from Cologne were incredibly

keen to receive the next invitation, journalists were willing to

report on Brotherslasher, collectors could no longer say no.

Though this could have been considered a happy occasion to start

afresh, at that point and at the end of an eventful year, it was really

just a logical step to end it all dramatically, go out with the loud

bang, and concentrate instead, after this befitting comment about

the art business world, on their own work.

VII[2005] In the first works complex which was

created that year, photography played a more

important role than they had with Dont call

us piggy, call us cum. Danish Blue, the title of the complex,

contains, alongside seven computer prints each with a single figu-

re, the same number of smaller photographic works (30 x 40cm).

The assignment of possible counterparts in this constellation is

not obligatory and is instead left entirely to the beholder. The

most obvious difference to the works of the previous year is that

now objects have been integrated into a situation already present.

It is a new decision that works to the disadvantage of the figureswith their dialectic relationship in this game of presence and

absence of physicality. The two Danish Blue series undermine

the thesis that Berresheims previous works until that point

generally reflected permanently on the possibilities and conditions

of image production, the bearing of meaning and the mechanisms

of reception. With the outsized computer images mainly two

architectural and figurative elements stand out: some of the wide

visual spaces are divided by additional vertical walls that reach

all the way up. Apart from this, in all seven images, only female

figures are displayed, mostly in a state of undress [Image 9].

Furthermore, in comparison with previous works, increases the

intensity and diversification of both illumination and colours,

so that the Danish Blue complex contains the most theatrical

computer images so far. This impression is reinforced by the fac

that in almost all pictures the classic art historic object of study

the throw of folds, which has challenged countless generations

sculptors and painters since the early middle ages, plays a promnent role. So in all these works, it is neither narrative anecdotal

nor referential concerns that are of interest, but the sounding ou

of experiments with colour and shape, the composition of ele-

ments and their internal relationships in the image space as wel

as the search for perfect light, shadows and folds, all serving a

self-contained unprecedented visual experience. It is these artifi

al representations of physicality that are preferred to the non-fi

rative coloured sections and outlines. It is exactly this identifyin

even eerie element that obstructs the lapidary and pleasing opp

tunity to escape into abstract or associative areas, so that this

quite considerable obstacle actually manages to defeat the recip

ent by blocking the access to the confrontation with internalimage questions. At the same time, this physiological permeatio

which in its literal and semantic nakedness forms an integral

component of the hermetics of these pictures, demands an inten

readiness to overcome and concentrate, which transfers almost

as a matter of course onto the fundamental perception of the

pictures, as a kind of reward. And this one can be grateful for.

In contrast, The Danish Blue photographs totally omit an

display of human bodies or their computer generated simulation

but in their absence they reinforce the impression, that these

figures had been used not as a trigger of existential mind games

but primarily and mercilessly as construction elements. With the

all too concrete objects that take the figures place they articulata new rejection to the wide field of personal associations and the

freely floating game of art and cultural historic references.

By using geometric shapes, set in what are assumed to be rural

surroundings at night time, which are undoubtedly reminiscent

of accurately cut pieces of cheese and baguette [Image 10], the

frame of mind, which would normally be ensured by abstract

shapes, is blocked from the outset, as these overly concrete self-

reliant shapes enforce the reflection of internal image aspects su


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as composition and light unless your preferences in all serious-

ness lie in discussing the combination of blue cheese and female

figures.

Not only on an aesthetic but also on a technical level are the

recipients confronted with the strange unity of these new forms of

expression, since even with regard to art critics and art historians,

the competence of the media is limited when it comes to these com-

puter prints and photographs. While learning the technical funda-

mentals of painting, sculpture and printed graphics is a commonintroductory component of history of art and hands-on curator

courses, at this point in time not many art historians would be able

to follow even superficially the technical procedures of these high-

ly complex works or, with this kind of background, be able to ade-

quately judge these works. That is not necessarily a new phenome-

non, but it is at least grist to the mills of those who have been

asking for several years now for an art historical approach to these

visual studies, which still distance themselves from the tradition-

al primarily technical assessment criteria and classifications

because of the complexity and diversity of the media. It would in

fact be difficult to classify the computer images under primarily

material aesthetic premises. Why ban these works into the auxil-iary section New Media just because a considerable part of them

was created exclusively with the computer? To put this question

differently: isnt it evident that the history of painting and photog-

raphy in this context is far more interesting than the more recent

history of computer-based art, as it has, since the mid 90s see

under interactive art been exhibited at fun fairs such as for

example the permanent collection of the ZKM in Karlsruhe? And

doesnt Tim Berresheims art leave media-specific discourse in its

wake because of it, in order to question the basic mechanisms

and definitions of the art and image sciences at the same time?

New media or not, these works are primarily one thing, after all:

Pictures. The computer is here merely a tool to achieve the desiredpurpose of displaying visual spaces, figures, objects as well as their

configurations and constellations as precisely as can be imagined,

in order to finally represent them on an appropriate medium.

The work exists only then, when in this form as an original there

is only one certified print, with no limited editions it can leave

behind its relative status, even if after its completion it remains on

the hard disk.

VIII[2005] Berresheim challenges the separat

between allegedly new and traditional me

once again, this time with his most recent

work series, in which together with the Cologne artist Thomas

Arnolds, he combines computer generated figures with photogr

phy and painting. Together they created 20 works that were dis

played under the slogan FYW in June in the exhibition space

Uberbau in Dsseldorf, documented by the catalogue of the

same name accompanied by an introductory story written byJonathan Meese. The black and white photographs were taken

exclusively by night and show deserted places in the inhospitab

peripheries of urban built-up areas. Fences, gates, posts, baniste

stairs and brambles as well as the consistently snow-covered

grounds dominate mood and composition. In contrast to Meese

who as part of Dont call us piggy, call us cum painted over o

individual parts of the computer figures in red and black, Arnol

helps himself to the whole colour palette and doesnt even shy

away from covering the bodies completely with paint [Image 11

The subjects of the FWY images remind of the hand-

coloured eerie photographs of the surrealist Hans Bellmer, who

since the 1930s had staged dolls which hed built himself in foreor domestic environments. His second doll, developed in 1935 a

which from then on served as a model for his eroto-maniacal ph

tographs, allowed him to break away from the standard principl

of the human anatomy thanks to his new constructions [Image 1

Using the central ball element around which individual limbs ar

arranged in manifold variation, he managed to order the body

parts in a new way or to multiply them, even to simulate organic

changes through arithmetic forms of doubling and multiplication

But these syntagmatic metamorphoses are still bound by the cor

of the mechanics whose rhythmic and repetitive sequences mark

the manufacture of these abnormal figures as well as characteris

the work and production conditions influenced by Ford, remindof a time when the figures were created. Tim Berresheim is in co

trast a paradigmatical artist of the post-Ford-era, as the smallest

units of his three-dimensional figures are merely information

according to their creation in a post-industrial computer-assisted

information and service-oriented society. The vector-generated

bodies in the FYW series are, even more significantly than the

predecessors, subject to permutations, proliferations and exten-

sions. The digital mutations however take place independently


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of centres or bases, and in addition to this is the design of their

artificiality, incomprehensible to the observer in contrast to the

accumulative arrangements around Bellmers ball bearings. Those

would also regularly be connected with the linguistic forms of the

anagram and the palindrome or the idea of semantic liberation. 8

Berresheims manipulations however can neither be reduced to

smallest units of meaning nor are they newly coded triggers of

fantasies of any kind. It is therefore only a matter of consequence

that the figures do not function as areas for projections and aresimply components of the images, which avoid the exclusions of

linguistically communicated common denominators.

Despite these incompatibilities, these and all other mentioned

works by Tim Berresheim are not to be misunderstood as a plea

for the return to the innocuousness of lart pour lart, for it is the

inescapable intensity of the contemplation that can focus the view

on other products of fine art as well as on visual languages and

politics in general, as weve already seen. This transfer ability,

inherent to these images, reminds us, in its sensitisation of at least

one specific form of perception, of a piece of music with similar

educational-analytical consequences. We are talking about a com-

position that is almost diametrically opposite to Berresheims dog-ma of the highest possible artificiality: John Cages Composition

433 , which acquired its title from the length of the legendary

premiere performed by the pianist David Tudor in 1952 in Wood-

stock/New York. The three movements of the piece were marked

by Tudor opening the lid of the piano at the beginning of the

movement and closing it at the end, but he wouldnt do anything

in the time between. Nonetheless, by denoting the beginning and

the end and regardless of what happened in between, in this case

all the random background noise, this was defined as music.

For Cage the non-intentional is of highest importance, and

he ignores the handed down idea of the artists subject and allows,

in the greatest possible contrast to Berresheim, the highest degreeof non-artistic and non-artificial reality. However, there are two

points at which these two extremely contradictory aesthetic models

meet: on one hand in the hermetic strictness here the highest

degree of artificiality, there the highest degree of reality; on the

other in the concentrated presentation here the concentration of

the image elements, there the concentration of what is happening.

In both cases both the symbolism as well as the referentiality get a

clear refusal, because for both Berresheim and Cage the conditions

of human perception, i.e. the individual physicality, form an imm

diate connection with the presented work. All these elements sen

sitise the dealings with visual and acoustic presentations beyond

the reception of the completed work.

La Monte Young, fluxus artist and composer of minimalisti

music, greatly influenced by Cage during the 50s and 60s, once

stated that it is as useless to write about art as it is to dance abou

architecture. He certainly isnt entirely wrong here. Who knows

perhaps it would indeed be more appropriate to play music inappreciation of Tim Berresheims art instead of filling stacks of

paper. In what would more likely than not be a hopeless effort fo

an adequate conversion to music, a low droning, very distorted

nonetheless pleasant bass would start the piece; soon afterwards

a sharply mixed guitar with significantly more high frequencie

than Steve Albini would ever dare to mix would cut up the sub

sonic waves, whose precisely separated segments would soon be

confronted with quiet but piercing screams. The only thing miss

ing is a drum kit. But at this moment the funky rolling sounds o

the computer generated drum joins in, because obviously the he

metics need to be maintained. And the devil would have a hand

in it if the space in front of the stage were not to empty as a resuAnd if you still feel obliged to dance, you would soon enough lo

like the deformed physiognomies of the computer prints. Perhap

you should just leave it at that, and just shut your mouth. That

wouldnt do any harm. Im sorry, but it just has to end somewhe

Wolfgang Brauneis

(Translation: Bettina Swynnerton und Annabel Bootiman)


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1

compare Leeb, Susanne, Metamalerei. Interview mit Albert Oehlen, in:

Texte zur Kunst, December 1999, year 9, issue 36, pages 5357

2

Just think about the exhibition series Painting on the Move which was

shown also in spring 2002 parallel to the Art Basel in three museums in Basel.

This would give this new trend an art historic legitimation in the art business

that left nothing to be desired in terms of emphatic impact. In the shadow of

such blockbusters (irrespective of the different strategies, artistic aspirations or

official attitude) the hype surrounding the young German painters of the so-called

Neue Leipziger Schule or the gallery Guide W. Baudach in Berlin (at that timestill called Maschenmode), would continue to increase.

3

see there, page 55

4

see Brauneis, Wolfgang, Sinners Devotion, in catalogue Tim Berresheim and

Jonathan Meese, Dont Call Us Piggy Call Us Cum, Cologne, Gallery

Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne 2004, pages 48

5

Keller, Horst, Edouard Manet, Munich 1989, page 34

6

For more information about New Amerika see www.na-o.com

7

Brecht, Bertolt, Anmerkungen zur Oper, in: Anmerkungen zur Oper,

Versuche 112. Issue 14, Berlin 1963, pages 101107; here page 104.

8

compare Mller-Tamm, Pia and Sykora, Katharina, Puppen Krper Automaten.

Phantasmen der Moderne, in: Puppen, Krper, Automaten. Phantasmen der

Moderne, Dsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1999, pages 6593,

here page 84

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